First Barcelona Test

First Barcelona Test - Fourth Day

3rd & 7 37yd

Hello. I'm an armchair enthusiast and I know exactly what's going on from my armchair. I read things and then tweet things and blog things and this makes me an expert on all things Honda and McLaren and Mercedes and Renault. Everyone is sandbagging all the time and Ferrari are pretending to be quick so that everyone thinks they're slow when really they are average. It's all in the mind.

Jonny D

by John Doe 2/22/2015 4:28:22 PM
How is it a shock to other teams? It was only Lotus that set a time on Super-Softs. If it was Ferrari or Red Bull or Williams it would have been a shock but if was only a Lotus. I'm not shocked at all. Cause Lotus don't have anywhere near as good as Aero and Chassis as Red Bull and Ferrari so I'm not shocked and not that impressed. Red Bull and Williams and also Ferrari can probably also set that time on Mediums. I'm not shocked or impressed at all.

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:28:54 PM
Apart from the technicalities , I do know quite a lot about F1. Having watched it since 2006 when I was just 10.
That Merc can go down to 1.22 when on a proper Quali run

by The Power of Dreams 2/22/2015 4:29:14 PM
It was a shock because it definitely was carrying more than 25% of fuel capacity for sure

by The Power of Dreams 2/22/2015 4:30:25 PM
@ThePowerofDreams: 25 kilos of fuel cost about 0.875s per lap in lap time. Still, I would advise against trying to guess fuel loads at this stage.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:32:20 PM
@The Power Of Dreams Yeah a shock to you but not a shock to Red Bull, Williams and Ferrari. Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull can probably set a time like than on Mediums if not just a little bit slower, Mercedes won't have anywhere near a gap as they did last year. I am sure Red Bull, Williams and Ferrari can set a time like that on Mediums if not only about two tenths slower than that lap from Rosberg.

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:33:12 PM
The Teams know Mercedes is still the fastest. People need to remember just how badly they were beating the other teams most of the time. Plus they didn't have to run at 100% sometimes to do it.

by Jacob Rosencrantz 2/22/2015 4:33:24 PM
Thats why I said that 'at least', it may even be 50%

by The Power of Dreams 2/22/2015 4:35:45 PM
@ThePowerofDreams: Which is why I would advise against jumping to conclusions about potential lap times at this stage without knowing the fuel loads.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:36:29 PM
@Alan, they don't need the gap they had last year to still do just as good... Remember people that gap was HUGE!!

by Jacob Rosencrantz 2/22/2015 4:36:54 PM
@Alan. Believe me, other teams are going to be atleast 0.4s slower than Mercs, at least. Except for the Mclaren Honda, which is still an unknown

by The Power of Dreams 2/22/2015 4:38:12 PM
@Jacob, they ran 100% at every race, once they had it covered they turned their engines down, that's what most teams would do with restrictions on the number of engines allowed mate

by Drake 2/22/2015 4:38:24 PM
Williams are actually faster than Mercedes, when I say faster, they are faster than Mercedes and have and actually a lot better traction than Mercedes. Coming out of corners Williams gets away a lot faster than Mercedes and are a bit faster than them also in a straight line. Was easy to see at Germany when Hamilton didn't even look like passing Bottas at all.

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:38:56 PM
Laurence, you've got to admit, that lap still shows that Mercs do have a sweet edge over others

by The Power of Dreams 2/22/2015 4:39:17 PM
@ThePowerofDreams: It backs up what we've been saying for some time: Mercedes has only shown a fraction of their pace this pre-season. But it's still very difficult to make any direct comparisons. As others have said, I would be surprised if Mercedes didn't have the edge at the first race, but mainly because they were so dominant last year.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:40:33 PM
Back on track, Grosjean, Rosberg, Kvyat and Nasr are on track. Bottas has just come back to the pits.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:41:20 PM
Rosberg has improved to a 1:24.321 now. Still on the mediums.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:41:49 PM
Jacob Rosencrantz Last years gap did the sport a lot of harm and loss of spectators. For the good of the sport we need closer races and championship to be decided in the last few races, not at half season.

by Bart 2/22/2015 4:41:59 PM
I do think though in Races Mercedes will still be a lot faster and will just always take off from the rest of the field like last season.

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:42:17 PM
Nobody complained when Ferrari or Red Bull or McLaren or Williams used to dominate F1, why do they have an issue with Mercedes ?

by MrTuK 2/22/2015 4:44:25 PM
@MrTuK: Actually a lot of people did complain. And stopped watching.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:44:45 PM
It looks like Vettel has gone back out after a long spell in the garage at Ferrari.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:45:39 PM
@alan - it could just be that the Mercedes has more ballast than the Williams.

by Ian Stephens 2/22/2015 4:45:54 PM
Does anyone know when Mercedes provided their 2015 spec engine to the other teams and have they saved their tokens for mid season upgrades

by The styb 2/22/2015 4:46:22 PM
@Thestyb: Mercedes has provided 2015 engines to its customers since the start of testing. They have been quiet about token spend, but they say almost every part of the engine is new in some way.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:47:23 PM
Glad to hear @alo_oficial all ok 👌

by Daniel Ricciardo via twitter 2/22/2015 4:48:33 PM
111 laps completed, fastest time of the day (so far), we'll call that a day @RGrosjean http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-doiblIYAAdYQB.jpg

by Renault Sport F1 via twitter 2/22/2015 4:49:25 PM
MrTuK A lot of rules and regulations were changed because of Schumis domination, to stop him from winning. Now according to some research made last year and Bernie acknowledged it, that 50% of the TV viewers has left the sport. Lets not make it Mercedes haters.

by Bart 2/22/2015 4:49:58 PM
Of course Mercedes changed almost everything in some way, they want as few tokens left for the other guys in season as possible right?

by Jacob Rosencrantz 2/22/2015 4:50:05 PM
@JacobRosencrantz: No, you've misunderstood the way it works. The tokens aren't split among the teams, they are spent on the engine which is then supplied to the teams. And tokens are only spent on performance upgrades, they can upgrade on the basis of reliability, cost or safety at any point without spending tokens. So just because all parts have been changed doesn't mean they were all changed for performance reasons.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:51:54 PM
It's easy to see Mercedes aren't the best team. Cause they had a big gap last season and now teams are closing that gap fast. They only got that gap cause teams were still working on their 2013 V8 car when Mercedes started on the 2014 V6 car. If All the top teams started on the 2014 V6 car at the same time Mercedes would be like 2nd or 3rd place, for instance when everyone was always working on the V8 car in 2013 Mercedes were always a 2nd or 3rd place team, sometimes even 4th. So when teams catch up Mercedes will fall back down like they did with the V8's. I just wanted to point this out to show Mercedes aren't the best team.

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:52:27 PM
@Alan: You have also misunderstood a lot of what has been going on the last few years.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:53:00 PM
Red flag ten minutes from the end. Nasr has stopped at Turn 6.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:53:41 PM
@Laurence I haven't misunderstood anything. I know what I am talking about :)

by Alan 2/22/2015 4:54:05 PM
Ok, but Merc have only dominated 1 season, But Red Bull did it for 4 seasons and Ferrari well I lost count how many !
So what is the negativity with Merc ?
F1 has always seen one team or other find a loophole in the rules to take advantage and have a quicker car than the others.
The only way to stop that inovation is to have standard cards and engines and just let the drivers fight it out on track.
Then their would'nt be a Ferrari or Merc or Honda or Renault interest, just racing. Do we want hardcore F1 supporters that follow teams or drivers for years or do we want Joe Bloggs in the street that just watches it for 3 or 4 races and then loses interest ?

by MrTuK 2/22/2015 4:55:07 PM
Even faster lap from @nico_rosberg on the same set of medium tyres: 1m24.321s. @RGrosjean still fastest with 1m24.067s on supersoft #F1

by Pirelli Motorsport via twitter 2/22/2015 4:56:07 PM
It looks like that red flag is going to end the session and this week's test. Just three minutes left on the clock. Tick tock, tick tock...

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 4:58:00 PM
sorry I will ask again in a different way any idea why the Ferrari never came out again after 69 laps

by kathy 2/22/2015 4:59:16 PM
@kathy: It did come back out Seb completed another five laps just now. A stop of that length is most likely an engine or gearbox change.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:00:02 PM
We have got green flags again for the final minute of this week's test

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:00:33 PM
Rosberg, Kvyat, Bottas and Vettel all head back out for one last blast

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:01:00 PM
The chequered flag comes out and with it the second pre-season test of 2015 comes to an end.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:02:45 PM
Thanks for joining us this week. We'll have a full session report and we are gathering quotes and information from the paddock as I type. Check back on the website later for more reaction to today's event and the week's test in general.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:03:52 PM
We'll be back next week for the final pre-season test of the year (Thursday to Sunday). I hope you'll join us.

by Laurence Edmondson 2/22/2015 5:04:25 PM

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